I’m glad we’re now almost clear on how this works. But not quite. You write: “If I have NO V1 files, V2 encryption and the setting of timestamps will ALWAYS work like V1 did with KeeptimeStamp=1. Correct?”.

No. Incorrect. I’ll say it again:

– The only time the Keep Time Stamp setting has any effect is when you are encrypting a given file for the first time. So, when working with already encrypted files, V1 and V2 behave identically – regardless of the setting of Keep Time Stamp setting in V1.

Often, I keep the door open for modifying the behavior of AxCrypt according to user feedback. But this is probably one area where I’m afraid I won’t budge. Fooling around with the time stamps was always a bad idea – it just took some time for me to realize it, but that was more than 10, closer to 15 years ago.

The time stamps mean “when was this file last updated”. And that’s what it should say. Not “when was something inside last updated”. Everytime we try to “lie” to the system, we’ll get punished for it sooner or later. Therefore AxCrypt won’t lie anymore with the timestamps. If a file is modifed, the timestamp is updated.

When a file is decrypted, that is equivalent to a restore operation, and then it makes sense to restore the time stamp as well – which is what is done.